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From: Jasper
Date: 9/13/01
Time: 2:17:37 PM
Kari,
The idea of having to rally around a man I do not consider to be the legitimate leader of this country much less the Free World makes me want to puke. A "popular war" always helps the sitting President for as long as the cause remains popular. Like it or not, the attacks on Tuesday boosted support for Bush tremendously and made it very difficult to criticize him. That's one of the reasons I didn't rule out the possibility right away that people behind the attacks were homegrown.
It doesn't follow that the bombers did what they did for that reason or that American political beneficiaries were behind it. There are more villains in this world than the ones we oppose in the United States and no reason I can see for any of them to copycat the MO of Osama Bin Laden.
The short attention span of the media is another issue.
That irresponsible stunt CNN pulled last night of showing a group of Palestinians celebrating the tragedy was certain to bring out the bigotry in some people like the kind we saw aimed Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbor. There is no why in hell that that picture could have been a true reflection of how Arabs, Arab-Americans or Muslims in general felt about what happened. Unfortunately for too many people, "seeing is believing" even when they should know in their heart of hearts that it can't be true. --Jasper